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5 Tips to Actually Achieve Your Goals This Year

POP QUIZ!Name every New Years resolution you made 7 weeks ago!

Were you able to do it? If you’re having trouble even remembering your goals, we can assure you you’re not alone! Chances are, you had a few plans revolving around your career, your fitness and health, and/or your finances. If you’re not on track with your 2016 goals, you’ve still got time to recover. But, it’s time to take action if you want this to be a productive year. Here, Sparta Consulting Group will share a few tips for how to make sure your goals don’t fall by the wayside in 2016.

1. Evaluate your goal: Make sure it’s something you REALLY want.
The only way to overcome a challenge is for your goals to be bigger than your excuses. A common reason that people don’t achieve their goals is because they simply don’t want it bad enough. Take your health, for example. You may be struggling to make it to the gym each day; meanwhile, your friends have been hitting the treadmill daily since January 1st. If getting into good shape isn’t truly important to you, it’s never going to happen. To succeed you will need serious conviction.

2. Be realistic!
One of the easiest ways to be derailed is to choose unattainable goals. Doing so usually causes you to abandon the mission altogether. Not to mention, it discourages you from future goal-setting. It’s best to choose a target that stretches you beyond your normal limits, but is still conceivable. For example, if you are trying to lose weight by cutting calories, it might not be realistic to aim for 12oo calories a day, 7 days a week. If you try it and fail, you might stop watching what you eat entirely. Instead, you could choose a goal of 1400 net calories per day, which might be easier to stick to month over month.

3. Outline your plan – every single detail!
Speaking of baby steps, make a plan! Goals are not achieved all at once; they take time and scheduling. Dedicate however much time necessary to write down each of your goals. When we set goals at Sparta Consulting Group, we ask ourselves “how?” as many times as possible. Here’s an example:

“My goal is to make better financial decisions.”

How?

“By spending less money on a daily basis.”

How?

“The first thing I will do is pack a lunch to bring to work each day.”

How?

“Tonight I will stock up at the grocery store and prepare lunches for the week.”

Do you see how important the details are? There’s a big difference between making better financial decisions, and then actually thinking through (and writing down!) the little steps. Outlining your plan will increase the probability of you accomplishing your goals every time.

4. Reward yourself.
It’s incredibly important to reward yourself for the small successes along the way. Within your plan, mark off small increments that warrant a reward. This way, you’ll have something positive to look forward to, which will only reinforce your good habits this year.

5. Don’t beat yourself up!
Sometimes goals get derailed. Life happens, and that’s okay. Sometimes you’ll lose motivation for a day or a week or even a month! But the important thing is to keep going. Pick yourself back up and keep fighting, despite the voices in your head screaming at you to stop. When you finally achieve success, the reward will be that much sweeter!

For more tips from Sparta Consulting Group about setting and achieving your goals (we’ve got LOTS of tips!), visit our blog!